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In classic WoW, these were the highest bonus to fishing skill poles you could get. The only other pole + fishing skill was Strong Fishing Pole. This was back when fishing skill actually mattered and you couldn't even cast in places you hadn't leveled up to, and the bonus was required in many areas so the fish didn't "get away." In fact, this pole may have been necessary to get enough fishing skill to fish up the hydra boss Gahz'ranka in the original 20man raid Zul Gurub.

Today, the database has these listed as 10% drop rate from Shellfish Trap but it was much lower in vanilla - probably closer to 1%, and was a very very tedious grind. These traps, found off the coast of Desolace, also spawn lobsters (in addition to those swimming around the area) that you had to fight, or else gave you fish or a junk item, then it was off swimming around to look for another trap to open.

In the era before Daily Quests, I used these to grind the gold to buy myself and my friends our level 40 mounts (now the regular level 20 slow mounts) by spending hours swimming from Shellfish Trap to Shellfish Trap, collecting and selling the fishing poles on the auction house.

You can still acquire these poles from Shadowprey VillageShellfish Traps, but now you must have the quest Fish in a Bucket in your quest log before you can loot the traps. This requires that the player be Horde and high enough level to quest in Desolace. Gone are the days of being able to go over there as Alliance to farm this pole.

Get yourself some water breathing potions, or be a Warlock, accept the quest, then go click some traps. Do not, however, turn in the quest once it's complete if you did not get the pole or if you want to farm more of these in the future. If you do turn in the quest, that's the end of farming as this quest is not repeatable. Drop the quest and pick it up again. Go farm traps. Repeat as needed.

While the fishing rate is horribly low, this pole can also be fished up in Warlords of Draenor zones. The best zone to get them in used to be Shadowmoon Valley, but the rate was nerfed badly all across the board early in the expansion.